Presently used devices for exchange of heat energy with an environment at a different temperature are essentially of the type employing the convection mode. Closed circuit devices ensure almost exclusively heating, whilst open circuit devices (pulsed air) may ensure heating and/or cooling of dwellings or industrial premises. Other devices with heating film employ electricity as source of energy and they ensure an exchange of heat energy by radiation. However, these devices can obviously only ensure heating of the premises and their use is therefore forcibly limited.
For heating rooms in buildings, elements for heating by low temperature infrared radiation are already being used. The emitter elements used are generally constituted by foils or films which are fixed to a wall or a ceiling by clipping or adhesion by means of adhesive tapes. These low temperature infrared radiation emitter elements are in contact with an insulating cushion separating them from the wall and they are coated, towards the interior of the room, with a covering with which they are in contact. Such covering may be constituted by an added ceiling, on the upper face of which extends the low temperature infrared radiation emitter.
Although such a heating device offers the advantage of producing a flow of low temperature infrared radiation distributed regularly over the whole surface of the room, it nonetheless presents the drawback that it is relatively complex to operate, requiring relatively long manpower times. Furthermore, on the one hand, the thermal yield is not constant due to the properties of absorption of the radiation of the material constituting the covering or the added ceiling, which falsifies the calculations of the power to be installed, and, on the other hand, the existence of a stream of air between the various elements compromises the yield and is responsible for degradations of the materials used, by overheating.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome these drawbacks by providing a device of particularly simple design, of small dimensions and weight, with high energetic yield and adapted to ensure air-conditioning of premises, used equally well as emitter or absorber of heat energy.